Documenting A Business Management System: The Required Procedures
The six required procedures, (which can now be combined into four documents in ISO 9001:2008), that need to be written are:
1. How the company controls its documents
2. How the company controls its records
3. How it processes nonconforming product
4. How it conducts and records internal audits
5. How it processes corrective actions
6. How it processes preventive actions
The standard does not dictate how to do any of these processes; it simply provides guidelines and states that a company must document how it performs these processes. A company should not document processes or required procedures based on perceptions of the standard or what an auditor looks for. A company must document its management system based on how it conducts business.
Any other work instructions—flow charts or procedures that a company feels it needs to effectively produce the given product or service—should be done in a format that best suits the purpose controlling these processes. The most important part of documenting any type of process—management process or product process—is to define the inputs, outputs and measurements of the process. The better a company defines how to measure each process, the easier it will be to monitor the outputs (data) and pin point the areas that require improvement.
“Simplicity is the ultimate in sophistication” Leonardo Da Vinci, a motto I tried to live by and it is most relevant when it comes to documentation. The simpler the document the easier it is disseminated and understood.
It is easier to write complex procedures than to write a simple procedure/process, however the margin of error is much higher in complexity.
So stick to the basic requirements and the fundemantels of the business and you can not go wrong